Charlie Hunnam’s a Man on a Mission in New ‘Lost City of Z’ Trailer

James Gray got played hard on his last release, the classically-minded drama The Immigrant. The film earned rapturous reviews out of its premiere at Cannes and landed a distribution deal with the power players at the Weinstein Company — who then let it languish in obscurity before quietly releasing it over a year later. The film was a triumph among critics but a huge missed opportunity from an industry perspective. Hopefully, Gray will have a better go with the less domineering Amazon Studios and Bleecker Street, who will release his new picture The Lost City of Zin April.

Today brings a new trailer for the ambitious adventure film, teasing eye-widening natural vistas and shedding a little more light on the intellectual and emotional underpinnings of the story. Charlie Hunnam portrays Colonel Percy Fawcett, a British surveyor with dreams of locating the forgotten Amazonian civilization Z, which he repeatedly pronounces as ‘Zed’ because Britain is weird. He takes leave of his beautiful-’n-dutiful wife (Sienna Miller) and strapping son (Tom Holland) to venture into the jungle thickets in search of ... something. Glory? Perhaps. Riches? For sure. But as Fawcett’s cohort Corporal Henry Costin (a bespectacled Robert Pattinson) states at the tail end of the trailer, he’s looking for more than the city can offer him.

Strong cast, swoonworthy photography, meditations on colonialism and obsession — what’s not to like? The early notices out of the film’s premiere at the New York Film Festival last fall were generally positive, so this ought to be marked down on the moviegoing calendar.